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Ilham Tohti and his wife in a photo sent to RFA’s Uyghur Service via WeChat on Jan 13, 2014, two days before his detention.

RFA

The wife of jailed Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti is facing extreme hardship and increasing isolation as she struggles to raise the couple’s young sons in Beijing, she told RFA.

Guzelnur has been left with scant income to care for the couple’s young sons in Beijing while her husband serves a life sentence for “separatism,” she said.

“Sometimes I get financial help from friends or relatives, but they’ve got their own kids too, and their own expenses to meet,” she said in an interview on Tuesday.

“I make 3,500 yuan (U.S.$540) a month, and the nursery fees for my youngest are 1,200 yuan a month, while it costs 300 yuan a month for my eldest just to eat lunch in school,” she said.

“Sometimes a friend called Huang helps out by buying the kids some clothes, but he has his own family too.”

Guzelnur said she has also asked Tibetan poet and writer Woeser for help when things get tough.

She said she is unable to take time out from her children’s routine to visit her husband, who is serving his time in the remote northwestern Xinjiang region in spite of having made a life in Beijing.

Life sentence

Tohti, a former professor at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing was sentenced to life in prison following his conviction on a charge of “separatism” by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court in Xinjiang on Sept. 23, 2014.

Asked if she visits her husband, Guzelnur said: “There is nobody to take care of the kids, and I am busy doing it.”

She said authorities at Urumqi’s No. 1 Prison, where Tohti is being held, are refusing to allow any items to be delivered to him by visitors, including clothing.

But she said the family has plans to travel back to the region during the summer holidays.

“I will be back at my parental home for those two months,” Guzelnur said.
Socially isolated

Beijing-based rights activist and family friend Hu Jia said Guzelnur has also become socially isolated since Tohti’s incarceration, as many of the couple’s former friends have withdrawn contact for fear of political reprisals.

“Guzelnur and the two kids have been living a very lonely life in Beijing since Ilham Tohti was detained,” Hu said in an interview on Tuesday.

“The Uyghurs who live here don’t dare have anything to do with them because they are afraid, and they are in economic hardship too,” he said.

Hu said Tohti, who was jailed over content posted on his UighurOnline website, is currently serving the longest sentence handed down to a political prisoner in China.

“His kids only get to visit him once a year, during the summer vacation,” Hu said. “I call on the international community to show more concern and support for his family and the hardship they face.”

Asked if she had considered leaving the country, or sending her children overseas to study, like the families of a number of other jailed dissidents, Guzelnur said none of the family has a current passport.

“None of us has a passport, and we don’t even have a household registration here in Beijing; it’s back in [Xinjiang],” she said. “We haven’t managed to get it transferred yet.”

“It’s too hard for us to get a passport [in Xinjiang].”

Migration controls

China’s nationwide “hukou,” or household registration system, gives families access to local services like education and health care, while unregistered people in China are excluded from social subsistence and health care reimbursement schemes, and are vulnerable to official harassment and fines.

Throughout most of China’s larger cities, migration is strictly monitored, and only arrivals with advanced degrees or special skills are able to qualify for a transfer of their “hukou” registration card.

While the government recently eased restrictions on household registration in Xinjiang, critics said the move was aimed at promoting ethnic majority Han Chinese resettlement to the area, with the mostly Muslim ethnic minority Uyghurs subject to a much more stringent application process.

Uyghurs and members of other non-Han Chinese groups in Xinjiang face huge barriers to applying for passports, and those who already hold them have been ordered in some regions to hand them in to police stations.

China has been keen to portray its Uyghur population as potential terrorists after a wave of violent incidents hit the region following a crackdown on deadly ethnic riots in Urumqi in July 2009.

Many Uyghurs try to leave China illegally, saying they are fleeing systematic persecution by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which then puts strong diplomatic pressure on neighboring countries to return the fugitives to China rather than treating them as refugees.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA’s Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Beijing has reacted angrily after India granted a visa to a Germany-based Uyghur activist, branded a terrorist by the Chinese government, to attend a conference on democracy in Dharamsala later this month.

Munich-based Dolkun Isa, from the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), has been accused of terrorism and conspiracy to kill people in Xinjiang in China’s remote northwest. The WUC is a grouping of the Uyghur community outside China.

The moves comes against the backdrop of China blocking an Indian bid to sanction Pakistan-based Masood Azhar, the head of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed, at the UN Security Council. China imposed a “technical hold” on the move, saying more information is needed on the matter.

“Dolkun Isa is a terrorist on red notice of Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is a due obligation of relevant countries,” China’s foreign ministry told Hindustan Times in an emailed response late on Thursday.

The brief reaction was couched in diplomatic language but reflected Beijing’s anger.

The conference to which Dolkun Isa has been invited will be held between April 28 and May 1at Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and this has added to Beijing’s unease.

Exiled Chinese activists from around the world will gather to discuss democratic transition in China. Dharamsala-based Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, labelled a “separatist” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” by China, is expected to address the meet.

The conference is being organised by US-based Citizen Power for China, which is led by Yang Jianli, who was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Munich-based Dolkun Isa, who was granted asylum by Germany in the late 1990s, confirmed to Hindustan Times on email that he had received an electronic visa from India and is looking forward to his first visit to the country.

“Yes, I am invited one of the conference in Dharamsala which will be held between 28 April and May 1. I am planning to go, so I have got the electronic visa for India,” he said.

“I really want to visit India because I have never been (to) India,” he said. “India is one of my dream (countries) to visit.”

The Xinjiang region has seen rioting and frequent violence between the local Uyghur population and government forces. Exiled Uyghur activists say the violence is a result of Beijing’s hardline policies and a reaction to the government’s efforts to subsume the unique local culture.

Dolkun said India and East Turkistan – the historical name of the region that China says separatist Uyghurs from Xinjiang are fighting for – had good relations.

“I would like to enjoy Indian culture. East Turkistan and India had a long and very good relationship in the history. Uyghurs love India’s people,” he said.

Talking about India and China, Dolkun said: “India is the world’s largest democratic nation and second big population after China. But China is still under totalitarianism rule. India has the responsibility to teach democracy to China.”

Dolkun acknowledged he has to be careful about his travel plans because of the Interpol notice against him.

“The Chinese government has made me an accused with Interpol and my name is on red (corner) notice. Because of this, I have faced troubles in some countries’ immigration. I was detained at the border of some countries. I have to be careful about travelling except in the European Union,” he said.

World Uyghur Congress spokesperson Dilxat Raxit said he hoped the Indian government was following the situation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and would voice its “solidarity with their fight for justice”.

The controversy comes at a time when top Indian leaders, including external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, have raised the issue of China blocking India’s bid to sanction Masood Azhar at the UN.

The new row, coupled with the question of Azhar, could cast a shadow on President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to China in late May.

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China sitting on a tinderbox in Uyghuristan (NOT Xinjiang!)

It is the forbidden lands of Xinjiang that test the Chinese regime’s stranglehold over the global Pan-Islamic wave of puritanical militancy and secessionist tendencies

Uyghur traders at a Sunday livestock market in Kashgar, Xinjiang. In the province, the majority Uyghurs (46.4%) aggressively jostle with Han (39%) to practise, preserve and perpetuate the Uyghur identity and relevance. Photo: Thinkstock

China has been a cradle of religio-cultural diversities that were historically tolerated by the various ruling dynasties who claimed the ‘mandate of heavens’ to shape the overarching traditions, philosophies and cultures as opposed to the rigidity of a formal and definitive religion. However, since the Communist Party of China’s reign in 1949, Mao Zedong initially suppressed all expressions of societal religiosity, only to see a certain liberal acceptance of religious autonomy in recent times, as long as it didn’t conflict with regime survival.

Amidst a total population base of 1.4 billion, an estimated 1.7 to 2 per cent are of the Islamic faith (approximately 25 million). In addition to the majority Han population (91.6%), the Chinese government officially recognises 55 ethnic minorities (8.4% of population), of whom 10 are predominantly Sunni Muslims. Old manuscripts claim the advent of Islam to the 620s when Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas, uncle of the Islamic Prophet, supposedly came to China on a mission and established the Huaisheng Mosque, over 1,300 year ago.

Broadly speaking, there are two distinct groups of Islamic adherents in China – the majority Hui people (who are similar to the majority Han Chinese in terms of ethnic-lingual profiles, spread across China) and the more restive Turkic ethnicity based Uyghurs, who are concentrated around the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Interestingly, official Chinese cartography encompasses the Indian territory of Aksai Chin, within the Xinjiang Autonomous region – affording it borders with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and Russia. Within the cauldron of Xinjiang, the majority Uyghurs (46.4% of population) aggressively jostle with Han (39% of population) to practise, preserve and perpetuate the Uyghur identity and relevance.

It is the forbidden lands of Xinjiang that test the Chinese regime’s stranglehold over the global Pan-Islamic wave of puritanical militancy and secessionist tendencies – often, resulting in violence, popular unrests and hidden fissures that are kept away from the glares of the world. Chinese absolutism is practised to ensure the lid is kept on the region’s simmering dissent by the Uyghurs. However, the Chinese government’s Uyghur-specific discrimination has resulted in further alienation and hardening of the Uyghur Muslims and their causes of separatism.

The famed Chinese ‘strike hard’ approach against the ‘three evils of separatism, extremism and terrorism’ has clearly divided the Islamic adherents into two groups – one of the ‘patriotic Chinese Muslims’, i.e., Hui people (they have no secessionist group or tendencies), who are allowed to practise their faith and beliefs, and the other of the discriminated Uyghur, who pray in different mosques from the Hui, and who have East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as the main secessionist group to form an independent ‘East Turkestan’.

The divide-and-rule of the Chinese government is clinically effective with the Hui Muslims seamlessly integrated into the Chinese mainstream. The taint of Islamic terror and fundamentalism is restricted to the Uyghurs. Usual tactics of repressive security cover to blank out news, demographic resettlements of Hans and the economic discriminations have increasingly marginalised the Uyghurs and therefore turned Xinjiang into a veritable tinderbox.

The footprint of the ETIM is visible from the cadres operating in Afghanistan (where they were trained by Al Qaida and 22 of them were arrested and detained in Guantanamo Bay), Pakistan (where they attacked Chinese engineers in the port city of Gwadar) and even in the ongoing conflict in Syria-Iraq, where the Uyghur cadres are seen fighting along the Al-Qaida affiliate, Nusra Front.

However, the ETIM (or Turkistan Islamic Party, as they call themselves) have been designated as a terrorist group by the US under Executive Order 13224 (blocking financial transactions) and the US Terrorist Exclusion List (which debars members from entering US). This terror designation is further confirmed by the UN, UAE, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and obviously China, thereby squeezing and limiting international support and funding. But, they have competing baiters amongst the ISIS, Al-Qaida and even the Taliban who empathise with the Uyghur cause and recruit their foot soldiers, arming and training the frustrated Uyghurs to the ultimate consternation of the Chinese.

Strategically for China, the import of Xinjiang unrest goes beyond the fears of Uyghur Islamic fundamentalism and militancy – it also tests the Chinese ability to cover its intrinsic fault lines in Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan, each of which has its own secessionist rationales against the mainland-Han Chinese rule. It forces doubts in the minds of the Chinese strategists and policy planners to invest in a restive area that is the principal highway of the strategic China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as indeed the gateway to the energy-flush Central Asian Republics that are key to keep the Chinese engines of economic growth running.

So far, heavy boots on ground and providential international environment of most countries clamping down on terror groups has spared Xinjiang from going completely out of control, though over 200 acts of terrorist strikes have been attributed to the ETIM. There is no visible or credible Chinese governmental effort to economically or socially try and integrate the restive Uyghurs. On the contrary, it is the sole ‘strike hard’ approach, bereft of any inclusive imperatives, that is getting deployed and the same has diminishing returns in the modern era, especially for a religious movement and insurrection that knows no official border or emotional appeal amongst the adherents across the globe. Its appeal is theoretically more readily available than say for a Tibet or Taiwan that is restricted to its constituents, beyond a point.

Xinjiang is the underbelly of a glaring Chinese reality that potentially posits the duplicitous Chinese stand of vetoing against India in the UN forum towards Indian efforts to designate Maulana Masood Azhar as a terrorist, as the Chinese still feel comfortable to egg on the Indo-Pak game of cloak and dagger as a willing accomplice of Pakistan. Though like Pakistan, which self-admittedly is atoning the sins of supporting fundamentalism, this is Chinese augury for chickens to come home to roost in Xinjiang. The dynamics and intrigues of international diplomacy may force the wary Western powers and the other stakeholders to recognise the tactical utility of the Xinjiang unrest as a counter-check to Sino aggression, duplicity and hegemony in the region.

The writer is former Lt-Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Puducherry.

visible or credible Chinese governmental effort to economically or socially try and integrate the restive Uyghurs. On the contrary, it is the sole ‘strike hard’ approach, bereft of any inclusive imperatives, that is getting deployed and the same has diminishing returns in the modern era, especially for a religious movement and insurrection that knows no official border or emotional appeal amongst the adherents across the globe. Its appeal is theoretically more readily available than say for a Tibet or Taiwan that is restricted to its constituents, beyond a point.Xinjiang is the underbelly of a glaring Chinese reality that potentially posits the duplicitous Chinese stand of vetoing against India in the UN forum towards Indian efforts to designate Maulana Masood Azhar as a terrorist, as the Chinese still feel comfortable to egg on the Indo-Pak game of cloak and dagger as a willing accomplice of Pakistan. Though like Pakistan, which self-admittedly is atoning the sins of supporting fundamentalism, this is Chinese augury for chickens to come home to roost in Xinjiang. The dynamics and intrigues of international diplomacy may force the wary Western powers and the other stakeholders to recognise the tactical utility of the Xinjiang unrest as a counter-check to Sino aggression, duplicity and hegemony in the region.The writer is former Lt-Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Puducherry.